INDIANAPOLIS – NASCAR lectured drivers in their Brickyard 400 prerace meeting Sunday to tell them it’s their responsibility to restart the races correctly.

The reaction from NASCAR came a day after a Nationwide Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway was full of controversy on restarts, including a controversial penalty to series points leader Elliott Sadler for passing leader Brad Keselowski before the starting line on a restart with 18 laps remaining.

Sadler said leader Keselowski spun his wheels while Sadler also got pushed by teammate Austin Dillon – so Sadler claimed there was nothing he could do.

After a more than five-minute lecture from race director David Hoots, NASCAR President Mike Helton took to the microphone to answer a question on what NASCAR would do if a driver intentionally pushes another driver to force a penalty.

“If you’re the leader, you’re supposed to restart in a very smooth and accelerated pattern,” Helton said. “The second-place guy, you’ve got to be careful that under normal circumstances, the first-place guy is going to beat you back to the start-finish line.

“If you’re in the second or third row, you’ve got a responsibility, too. If you try to shove a guy across the line in front of you to get in trouble, we can react to that (with a penalty).”

Hoots went over all the rules and stressed if the drivers did the restarts properly, NASCAR wouldn’t have to get involved by making a judgment call.

“If you don’t know these roles and responsibilities, lay over on the inside and drop to the rear of the field,” Hoots said.

Among the key elements of Hoots’ speech:

— The flagman waves the green flag at the initial start of the race. The second-place car can’t beat the polesitter to the starting line.

— On other restarts, the leader restarts the race by mashing the gas anywhere in the restart zone. Again, the second-place car can’t beat the leader to the line.

“There’s some exception where the leader can’t be in the lead at the start-finish line,” Hoots said. “They have to be very obvious. The leader, once he goes, has responsibilities of not trying to brake-check the car, burp the car.”

“The second-place car has the same shared bunch of responsibilities of not trying to take advantage of something that – this is very simple – that can create such a mess of a lot of people’s days.”